Speaking of Salon, “Wednesday Morning Download” columnist Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman) got taken to task for criticising the string-heavy production on the first two Nick Drake albums in favor of the divine Pink Moon. His interlocutor throws out the following argument: “Pink Moon is the album that all of the Northeast liberal Blue State elites like. For those of you, like me, surrounded by the real people in the Red States, I recommend Drake’s first album, Five Leaves Left.” While I can’t argue with Mr. Parasol Blog about the greatness of “River Man,” I’ll raise him “Fruit Tree” in response—and hope that “red state” and “blue state” make it onto the verboten words list for 2005.

On an entirely different foot, the brilliant Merlin Mann not only writes 5ives, he is also the author of 43 Folders, which turns out to have some tremendously cool tips about a lot of OS X software that, um, I don’t really use. Though reading what he says about Quicksilver, I’m inclined to try.